Sex- and region-specific transcriptomic differences in brainstem and cervical spinal cord microglia in rat offspring exposed to gestational intermittent hypoxia

We analyzed gene expression via RNA-sequencing in medulla and C3-C6 cervical spinal cord microglia isolated from young adult rats exposed to gestational intermittent normoxia or gestational intermittent hypoxia G10 sprague dawley rat dams were exposed to one of the following conditions: 1) 11 days of intermittent normoxia (21%/21% O2) or 2) 11 days of intermittent hypoxia (21%/10.5% O2). Offspring were born under normoxic conditions and allowed to grow to 8 weeks. Medulla and C3-C6 cervical spinal cord from 1 male and 1 female from 5 paired litters were harvested. Microglia were immunomagnetically isolated from each region and total RNA isolated for sequencing.